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Counting Heads in the Classroom No More

Cooking in bulk isn’t like cooking at home. Being able to scale the recipe to the production needs of a school site is essential to cost savings in school meals. School sites that are in tune to their average daily participation (ADP) and really pay attention to which meals are most popular and how entrees paired together in a menu tend to be selected are capable of predicting very closely a reliable count for production.

“The way it’s always been done” is one of the most popular answers in assessment reviews. That answer can apply to so many practices in school districts and one of the most prevalent that is inherently not in sync with scratch production is the infamous “student count”. It goes like this; typically called down to the kitchen around 9:00 a.m., depending on the school schedule, the classroom teachers take a “count” by child of who is eating “hot lunch”. If the menu has more than one choice that is noted as well ‒ for example 19 hamburgers and 6 peanut butter sandwiches for Mrs. Smith’s 3rd grade class. The kitchen tallies up all these numbers (which only in the most advanced districts are provided by anything other than multiple telephone calls) and bam, they start cooking, right? Wrong. When I ask them if they truly need these counts to know what to order and plan for service they usually say “no”, it’s just that “it’s always been done this way…..”

As soon as “scratch” becomes your “new normal” those 9:00 a.m. counts are not too useful. Also, depending on the demographic of your campuses, if your free-and-reduced population is your biggest customer, identifying those kids daily in the classroom isn’t too cool and most likely is not helping your meal counts by category. When your program is scratch-based the process of meal production has begun much earlier, often days earlier. If your district has consolidated production, either in a single central site or regional sites your site teams must order the meals ahead and this requires an intimate knowledge of what the kids most commonly choose.​

But stopping this practice can result in stress for the site teams. Part of reorganizing your operation is utilizing different tools to ensure that there is a meal available for every child that wants one without that classroom headcount. Here are some key practices that support informed planned production numbers.

As soon as “scratch” becomes your “new normal” those 9:00 a.m. counts are not too useful. Also, depending on the demographic of your campuses, if your free-and-reduced population is your biggest customer, identifying those kids daily in the classroom isn’t too cool and most likely is not helping your meal counts by category. When your program is scratch-based the process of meal production has begun much earlier, often days earlier. If your district has consolidated production, either in a single central site or regional sites your site teams must order the meals ahead and this requires an intimate knowledge of what the kids most commonly choose.​

But stopping this practice can result in stress for the site teams. Part of reorganizing your operation is utilizing different tools to ensure that there is a meal available for every child that wants one without that classroom headcount. Here are some key practices that support informed planned production numbers.

  • Use a calendar ‒ Daily production records provide a lot of information but most sites complete them and file them away if they are on a paper system. Even districts that use a digital system may not be in the habit of reviewing them when the cycle rolls around again. Keep a monthly calendar view of your menu posted in a highly spot easily visible by the production team. Every day before you file that production record away, record the meal count by entrée and make any other notes about field trips or significant events that may have affected the count that day.
  • Learn how many meals by period ‒ Probably the biggest stressor that results from removing the head count practice is a site worrying about running out of food. Though it’s not uncommon for elementary sites to be short the popular entrée by the time the last group enters, it’s always surprising to me how many sites do not know the average count by meal period or grade. Spending a week really tracking this can be an eye opener for school teams. The simplest method – count trays prior to each meal period and record write it down. Once the line is through count how many are left. Review how much food you have batch cooked, do you need to heat more? Pay attention to how much food you have ready throughout service. Alternatively, the person operating the POS should be able to provide the same information. Repeat this process daily, ideally through your entire menu cycle – whether it’s a month or six weeks. Having this knowledge readily available is very useful for substitutes.
  • Provide the site ADP – The site POS reports provide the meal counts daily but knowing the average across all meal types by eligibility is an essential tool that requires taking data provided by the POS and tracking it in a spreadsheet. Our fiscal expert has created Meal count tracking tools for various size programs that are easy to use and require very little time to keep up to date. They can be found here. For the director, providing the actual trends accumulating month by month is a powerful tool for setting and achieving new participation goals as well as ensuring that the sites see the results of their work over a time frame rather than only focusing on each day. Keeping the big picture results in view is key to improving accuracy and productivity.

Having confidence about how many meals to plan for is critical for scratch cook programs where mastering efficiency is the name of the game in keeping your budget in check. Over-production or over-ordering because the site is worried about running out of food can be extremely costly because it’s more than food cost, it’s labor across all sectors of your program ‒ from planning to procurement to service.

Release the teachers from taking counts and encourage them to do a little marketing for you, sharing the menu and the next day’s menu when they give their announcements (in many schools this is a part of school wide announcements.)

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